How will the development of the Clipper hamper the info-supe-hi? And what is the info-super-hiway anyway, eh? I'll leave out the buzzwords -- but Clipper will definitely hamper the deployment of good networks. Encryption is a vital tool for network management and authentication, even apart from privacy considerations. But Clipper is of necessity hardware-only, which means that most current platforms will never support it, and few future ones will actually have it, whether they're capable of it or not. And on many important boxes -- routers, for example -- just leaving room for Clipper on the boards will be expensive. We have the following dilemma: DES isn't exportable, Clipper isn't suitable, and lots of foreign governments won't allow it in anyway, I suspect. How is one supposed to do authentication on a global Internet? --Steve Bellovin